Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always enjoyed adventure games — mostly those of the point-and-click variety, but I’m certainly not averse to those with text parsers, or which are entirely text.

Trouble is, these days it’s actually surprisingly (and annoyingly) difficult to track down genuine examples of these without also being confronted with a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with what you’re looking for. I made the mistake of clicking on a GamesRadar piece about “the 25 best adventure games to get swept up in right now” earlier — obvious SEO-optimised clickbait, in retrospect — and literally three out of the 25 games were actual adventure games.

The rest? Far Cry. Hogwarts Legacy. Batman: Arkham Asylum. Fucking Skyrim. Not only did the list completely lack any established classics of the adventure game genre that are easily accessible today — such as any of the old Sierra and LucasArts titles that are on Steam and/or GOG.com — but it also seemingly completely misunderstood what the term “adventure game” actually means.

This is, sadly, not an unusual situation, because even the digital storefronts are completely unable to distinguish “adventure game” (mechanical genre) from “adventure game” (thematic genre) for reasons that are probably obvious.

Why did this happen, though? I suspect it’s because for a significant number of years, the adventure game genre — and specifically, the point-and-click variety of adventure game — was considered to be “dead”. Both Sierra and LucasArts, the two biggest names in the sector, had moved on to more action-based games, including with franchises that had been historically associated with pointing and clicking; in Sierra’s case, King’s Quest VIII made the ill-advised decision to become a 3D polygonal action adventure, while LucasArts took the Indiana Jones series firmly into Tomb Raider territory for reasons that, once again, are probably obvious.

In other words, the assumption was that no adventure games were being made, so the term “adventure game” fizzled out for a lot of folks — particularly a new generation of gamers who had never grown up with them. To them, “adventure game” simply meant “game in which you go on an adventure”, and thus to them it’s natural to include stuff like Skyrim, Horizon: Zero Dawn and all manner of other titles that clearly are not adventure games.

The thing is, though, that the adventure game was not dead. New point-and-click adventure titles continued to be released throughout the early 21st century, and as we get closer to today the genre as a whole has seen something of a renaissance in the indie sector. And it’s now quite difficult to find some of these “adventure game” (mechanical genre) games because they all get lost amid the myriad “adventure game” (thematic genre) titles.

Here’s a sample of what you get if you search for “Genre: Adventure” on GOG.com as of the time of writing, for example:

Not a single one of those is an “adventure game” by the traditional definition. The one that comes closest is Treasure of Nadia, but even that’s more a combination of visual novel and simulation than a straightforward adventure game — and as an 18+ adults-only title that’s always going to have limited visibility and appeal anyway.

Admittedly, just below the titles pictured we have Day of the Tentacle Remastered and Stasis, both of which are actual adventure games — but then it’s right back to other entries in the Tomb Raider, King’s Bounty, Rayman and Pathfinder series.

This is a problem. Because as much as I’m an advocate for talking about narrative-centric games in terms of thematic genre instead of mechanical genre, there are times when it’s useful to make those mechanical distinctions. And in this instance, I’d argue that “adventure game” as a mechanical descriptor is more useful than “adventure game” as a thematic descriptor, because in the former case it’s more specific.

When you talk about “adventure game” as a mechanical genre, you lead someone to expect something specific: a narrative-focused game, usually focused on a single protagonist (or perhaps a small group of protagonists), with a strong emphasis on problem-solving rather than action. In some instances there may be action sequences, but for the majority of the time, problems will be solved either through dialogue or by using objects both in the environment and in one’s inventory. These are games designed to tax the brain and the imagination, not dexterity and accuracy.

When you talk about “adventure game” as a thematic genre, meanwhile, you could mean pretty much anything. Guy with a gun shooting a lot of people on an island is an “adventure”. Woman with tight shorts clambering up rocky platforms is an “adventure”. Cowled superhero beating up criminals is an “adventure”. Custom character running through drab, boring open world is an “adventure”. Meaningless. Unhelpful.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that the term “adventure game” has had a somewhat nebulous, unhelpful definition. The first time was when it was originally being figured out as a genre, and the computer and video game press of the era was inclined towards using the term “adventure game” to describe any game with an exploratory element that wasn’t an arcade-style game.

That meant that, for some, role-playing games such as the Ultima series were considered as much “adventure games” as Colossal Cave and the classic Scott Adams adventures.

There was a bit of a difference there, though; the use of the term “adventure” for these types of game at that point in time carried the not-so-subtle implications that “these are games for intelligent people and/or grown-ups”. And indeed, these games were considered to stand apart from others available at the time; it was not at all unusual to see computer and video game magazines throughout the ’80s in particular have a specific “adventures” column every issue, during which they’d talk about new releases and provide tips on existing titles.

And then just to confuse matters, the Japanese have been referring to some visual novels (specifically those with a text box at the bottom of the screen, rather than text overlaying the entire screen) as “ADV” for years now — with “ADV”, of course, being short for “adventure”. This is even the case for kinetic novels which do nothing but tell a story and provide no opportunities for the player to make choices or otherwise interact with things.

This terminology has stuck with Japanese games, too; if you look at a modern-day Japanese RPG which features visual novel-style storytelling sequences, it’s not at all unusual for those games to describe said sequences as “ADV mode” or “Adventure Mode”, even though you’re actually going on the “adventures” in the more interactive exploration and battle components.

You can probably see why this is all a bit confusing.

So what do we do? Well, I can’t help but feel it’s probably too late for the term “adventure game” at this point. The use of it to mean “game in which you go on adventures” appears to have stuck far too firmly for it to be redefined — although I guess one could also make the argument that it’s already been redefined several times to date, so why couldn’t it happen again?

But no. Rather than hoping for a reversal of how the language of our media has evolved, my recommendation is instead that we should probably just be more specific in the way we refer to things. Here’s what happens to that GOG bestsellers list if you add the tag “Point&Click” to the “Genre:Adventure” filter:

As if by magic, we go from no “adventure games” (by the classic definition) to all adventure games (with the possible exception of Treasure of Nadia, again, but I’ll give it a pass for now). Much better. And so I guess we need to re-up our use of a term that we were already using anyway: “point and click adventure game”. That takes care of that, right?

Well, almost. It leaves the poor old text-based adventures (those which aren’t visual novels) out in the cold. But we have a suitable term for those, too: “interactive fiction”. While you may consider this to be a fairly modern term, Infocom, once regarded as the absolute masters of the art form at their peak, were happily using it back in the ’80s.

Some actually make the distinction between “interactive fiction” (text-based game that focuses on story) and “text adventure” (text-based game that focuses on puzzle-solving) and honestly, that’s kind of fine, too. “Illustrated text adventure” and “illustrated interactive fiction” are also fine for games such as Magnetic Scrolls’ work, which focused primarily on text but which also included graphics.

As we’ve seen with other mechanical genres, we’ve very much reached a point where it pays to be more specific in the way we talk about things than less. Look at the mess “roguelike” and “Metroidvania” are in now, for example — both have become terms that are less than optimal in their descriptiveness due to what a broad range of things they can be used to talk about today. Just like “adventure game”.

So the answer? Be specific about what you’re talking about. Don’t assume knowledge. Explain the appeal elements. And, if possible, stop putting games with guns in the “adventure game” section of digital storefronts.

All right. I had to try, didn’t I?

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Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.

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